The glorious peonies are gone and even the roses, which were stunning this year, have started to wilt in the heat of summer, which started unofficially today.

Like the flowers, May has gone by in a blur. In mid-May I went for a week-long research trip to Massachusetts to see a Louisa May Alcott exhibit at the Houghton Library and visit the Emily Dickinson Museum at Amherst (more on this later once I download pictures).  The day after we got back I attended Commencement at my small college on the hill, which I went to for the first time not as a faculty member in regalia but as a College Mother of my last College Daughter to graduate.  The day after my mom came to visit for a short but fun stopover to celebrate her birthday, and then I've had to go up to my small college on the hill a few times for several meetings to plan the summer program that I have been teaching in since 2006, and a new Summer Teaching Institute that I proposed and am helping get off the ground. Phew!

But May has not been all about work (I finished the pesky chapter I was struggling with and have been making slow but steady progress on the last chapter of the book, which is on Alcott) since I've also gotten to bake (this was the first rhubarb pie made with delicious fresh fruit donated by a friend at my small college on the hill), and I rode my bike (refurbished by my husband) to the farmer's market at my small city near the capital, which was great, and which I plan to make a routine stop from now until October.

Yesterday, I also got to visit my in-laws in West Virginia, something that had become a rarity after we moved near my small college on the hill, since the trip was almost three hours long each way. Now that we're back here and the trip is a comfortable two hours, I am able to go in the morning and come back in the afternoon and I get to spend quality time with them at their lovely "compound" on a hill. That's one more perk of having moved back to our old house since I can look forward to seeing them more often.